


Normalcy-Proof

by ApatheticByDefault



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Ian POV, Mickey POV, based on spoilers for season 5, set during season 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 19:41:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1523198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticByDefault/pseuds/ApatheticByDefault
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey doesn't understand how, after all this time, people still mistake him for a dirtier version of the abominable snowman, like the kind that looks sketched out in chalk and is obviously only one of the many cartoon monsters used to advertise sugared cereals. Sure, he's paler than the abominable snowman, and he's got the word "milk" spelt out in his last name, but he's this close to changing it, and, yeah, after everything, he's pretty sure he's proven he's not a bad guy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Normalcy-Proof

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically going to be a complete two- or three-arch story line.

The sun lets itself in through Ian's bedroom window, and he doesn't roll back over and into the safety of his sheets. It's hot and humid out, and, though he sleeps bare, the need for cool and thin linen to wrap his body in at the time of night is an obvious one. So the light pouring in from above him glares bright through the tiny holes in the fabric and can't be escaped with eyes open.

And Ian doesn't want to go back to sleep, really. Even if it is hard to get up in the mornings.

He wishes the day would come to him but remembers there’s not really any use in one at all if it can't be shaped and prodded at.

Mickey's not beside him, which is saddening once the want to see him draws itself into his mind at the thought of him, but also good in the same way, because it means Mickey believes he'll get to see Ian hobble down the stairs on his own for breakfast soon.

He stumbles into the bathroom and hears Carl scream something muffled at the exact same time he slams the door behind him, drowning out his sounds. It feels right, like he's silently telling his brother to shut up without actually having to.

He brushes his teeth and doesn't bother to wash his face. He isn't ready to feel the cold and wet movement of water droplets itching down his face, threatening to fall around the rest of his shaky body, just yet. He only picks at the sleep in his eyes and wipes the balls of them into his palms.

"Morning." He tells no one in particular when he's pulling out a chair at the kitchen table for himself, and scoring because he's not really paying any mind to who's there and who isn't, and who's sitting and who isn't. But he doesn't crush a body when he lets himself into his seat, so he takes that as a sign of ticking luck and decides to blink his eyes.

He doesn't have to teach them to adjust to the light, they do that just fine on their own. They do it so well that, eventually, Ian can stand being up and apart of the day, even if he doesn't know what it will mean.

He's had bad ones before, good ones even, and they all seem to start the same.

Cause and effect is tricky, he thinks, but, even if the mornings are the same, he knows people can change in the night, and that's when the days are given a chance to change too.

"Dude. You sleeping in now?" Mickey's there. The others are too, but they're so far away (Debbie's in the living room, Liam is hiding in the cupboard close to the stairs, and Lip is coming in through the front door with mail coupons) that they don't matter, because he can say whatever he wants to Mick through their distance and not have to worry about what he'll say back.

"It's 7:40." Ian knows what he means but has to say something anyway.

"What, no eight-mile run?"

Ian sighs. "I'm tired, got home late."

Mickey's silently grinning, because Ian got home late, and Mickey waited for him at the front steps, so he was tired too. They were both tired, reasonably so, and they would both sleep, and they'd both want to get up in the morning. And they did.

"I got you breakfast, man, eat up. Big day ahead." He leaned over the counter where he was burning pancake batter in the ever-sticking frying pan, to hand Ian a plate of the cakes with pre-poured dollops of syrup and an awkward coupling of five or six berries. Two pale pills were pushed into the center of the plate and came into light contact with the food when it roughly shifted from one part of the kitchen to the other. That way, they wouldn't drop.

Mickey rounded his way to pull up the next closest chair and settled a glass beside him. "Water. Drink it."

Ian raised an eyebrow at him.

"What, you prefer juice?" Mickey raised both of his back. "Get it yourself, asshole."

Ian just rolled the two tabs between his fingers before popping them into his mouth and depositing the water, swallowing them together and not saying a word.

All he'd ever wanted was something this domestic, this real, and this happy to be just that, but he also knew he felt he was barely there when everything had all started to drop into place. It was too late for him to act surprised when Mickey continued to give him everything he wanted and everything he thought was so far away from them both. He didn't need to be anyway. Didn't need not to forget to be surprised, like he would have, _should have_ , been, because it wouldn't stop him from being happy anyway.

And Ian's happy. He can't remember feeling this happy just to continue a story he thought was getting old. Maybe it's because he's learning to accept that it's normal for him to feel that way, every day.

It's been a while, but Ian still feels the same.

Mickey grabs himself the rest of the pancakes, and they're burnt to a resounding crisp. " _Extra flavour,"_ he remembers Mickey muttering when Lip snorted at him, and also, " _Obnoxious dick,"_ when he walked away.

He along with Debbie makes his way into the kitchen to join them, Liam bouncing on his hip. Debbie tosses the dirty pan into the sink for a cleaning that will only come much later, and most likely at her expense. "Gee, thanks for making us breakfast too."

"You've got your own two fucking arms, don't let me stop you from using them." Mickey bit down hard on his fork behind the movement of an ill-prepared breakfast etching itself in finality into his closing mouth, just to further spite the young sister.

"Hey, watch your mouth, there are children here." Fiona said the words with no real heat, coming from the corner of the room, and just beginning to pull a low cut tank down to droop over her shorts, the threads making Ian feel itchy at the sight of them, because they were running down her thigh, and she didn't even bother to tug at them. The shirt pull was in vain, because any part of her body seen in her immediate entrance worth covering simply wasn't.

_There are children here, Fiona._ And there are bigger things to be shocked by than body parts, like tongues that make swear words, when your father says them regularly, in a barely conscious stupor, and spilling sharply tasting alcohol onto the only wooden floors in your house while he goes at it. It seeps into the cracks and dries.

"Only kid you really need to worry about isn't even down here, and something tells me I'm not exactly his candle in the dark."

Just then, Ian hears Fiona shout, " _Carl!"_ and he doesn't even bother to direct his eyes elsewhere from Mickey's curiously turned face, because that happens, like, almost every day.

There's a blur of colour— Carl-like colours— though, when he drops from the laundry shute above them and lands on his bent legs, before standing them up straight only a moment's notice afterward. "Nailed it!" He yells, and, yeah, he did.

Lip had already reverted back up the stairs to their bedroom (they really spent too much of their life so high off the ground) with Liam, fetching a toy, or a cup, or whatever. It was always something, but Ian was getting used to mostly thinking about himself. And, well, Mickey. But, sometimes, those thoughts seemed selfish too, when everything the other man did made him feel as good as he'd offered him a chance to for just a split second, when he wasn’t caught up in the mess of everything around him that was so much brighter than the colour of his hair, and the blue in his eyes.

"Wha—" Mickey raised his eyebrows up high, turning back to his boyfriend. "The hell'd he come from?"

“Laundry shute. He likes to fall from there sometimes. Fiona’s already told him to stop.”

“A million times too.” Fiona glares back at Carl, also for the millionth time. “Not so sure how well we’ll be able to pay your medical bill the _next_ time you decide to break your arm.”

“Least you didn’t catch him trying to shove Bonnie down there. Girl’s a miniature Twiggy with a switchblade and a shiv. Our only hope was that her parents couldn’t afford to sue.” Lip leaves Liam in Debbie’s arms, and she goes back into the other room cooing, and he’s clapping his little hands, and he doesn’t need to be carried anymore. But it’s nice to think he's still young enough to be someone who isn’t afraid to let himself be carried. It won’t last long.

There’s always the fear that someone will drop you, even when they don’t want to, and it’s not always their fault.

“Who’s Bonnie?” Mickey asks, returning his cleared plate to the counter, only after swiping his finger along its middle, and testing for dried syrup.

“Carl’s girlfriend.” Lip opens the fridge.

“ _Ex_ -girlfriend.” Carl says quickly enough. “She up and left me, remember? She broke my heart.”

“Maybe you’ll find her.” Mickey says, and he looks at Ian. Neither are sure if it’s supposed to be a cause for discomfort or a weird form of romantic foreplay.

“Or she’ll come back.” Ian added.

Fiona laughs. “No need. That girl was trouble, could only teach him how to steal a car only through its destruction.” It was though she were suggesting there were a proper way to steal one. No one said anything about it.

Mickey looked at Carl. “You lost a good one.”

“Don’t I know it,” he replied solemnly, walking slowly and aimlessly.

“ _Use the stairs.”_ Fiona finalized, slapping him on the back of the head.

“The hell you never do that?” Mickey looked jealous. Ian thinks of Mickey falling and has to will himself not to laugh in his face. There’s some falling he’d never admit to, yet this was obviously a kind that interested him.

“Yeah, it’s hard to swallow pills with a broken neck.” Also, the thought had never quite occurred to him while he’d been able to fit in there. Shame.

“Beats taking the stairs.”

“Beats a lot of things,” Ian points out, guiding Mickey’s eyes to the bruise creeping up Carl’s elbow. “Just last week.”

"Yo." Lip's voice enters the room again. "Kev and I are going to borrow the truck, make some amends for the upcoming winter. Ian?"

"I... can't. Have to go to the club."

"What?" Mickey interjects, "It's a fucking week day, the hell do they need you there for now?"

"I'm 'tending." Ian feels guilty for not bringing it up, because he can still hear the warmth in Mickey's voice telling him to eat quickly in preparation for whatever day he'd planned for them. He feels even more guilty for thinking it probably wouldn't have been anything particularly grand anyway, save for some crushed weed and two pairs of trembling hands interconnecting in a dark alleyway, and Mickey knows this much too, but it would have still been special enough because... Mickey had planned him into it.

Mickey opens his mouth to respond but is cut off by Lip's next inquisition. "Mickey? You wanna help then?"

And he obviously doesn't _want_ to, but Ian's not so sure he specifically wants not to either. "Gee, sure." He mumbles, "Employee discount?"

Lip looks around, then at Ian. "Uh, not likely, but always a probability."

"Whatever, man. Don't hold up." 

~

That's how Mickey ends up riding along a beaten down ice-cream truck paraded in every colour not in the rainbow, and feeling every jolt in the turn and slide up and down a dry road crackling in the summer heat. The whole "employee discount" thing turns out to be a total bust, because Kev and Lip immediately begin unraveling the bags of pre-rolled joints and handing them out to each other.

Mickey doesn't comment on it when one gets passed his way.

"Three miles till the destination." Lip finds another excuse between puffs to not shut his ungrateful mouth.

Mickey nods, and Kev starts swinging a crowbar around wildly and squealing. " _Motherfuckers_ , I swore I got the last of _them_."

Whoever _they_ are, Mickey doesn't want to know.

He just stays silent and out of place (not a part he needs to put much effort into) until Lip, Mickey thinking they should just start adding an S to the end of his name, rubs his mouth before opening it.

"So, Kev. Think maybe we should have a revival of last summer's ghetto-marriage convo?" He doesn't look at Mickey, but the twisting in his gut urging him to punch him in the face at the sight of his ever-growing smirk tells Mickey it was meant for him.

"No _shit_ , Mandy again?" Kev looks suddenly wary of his company. "Because _that_ would be _great_."

"Nah, no, man. Ian and _Mickey_." And Mickey is certain Lip's head gets bigger on the last word to compensate for his mouth, because he's _sure_ it wasn't that size a minute ago.

"For real?" Kev turns their way, and Mickey suddenly wants to yell, "Look at the fucking road, _asshole!_ " "Bigamy, in this state?"

"Yeah, how is your wife?" Lip's turn again, and Mickey decides to start calling him Lips. Maybe only in his head, he doesn't want to give these self-righteous assholes any bright ideas.

"The fuck should I know?" Really, even when he's there, is he actually supposed to care enough to notice?

Kev turns the steering wheel in slight. "And she's got no problem with all this, whatsoever?"

"Ian told me she dyed her hair fucking _red_ at some point." Seriously, how is Lips not done with that joint? Oh, yeah, he just keeps restocking, and Mickey sits there feeling unsure of himself, but willing to participate, like with everything he does.

Mickey flips him off before turning away. "The fuck should she? She's got a roof over her head and food constantly traveling down her fucking throat. The bitch is eating me out of house and fucking home, her _and_ her infant." He's happy when Lips doesn't comment on the status of it as _Mickey's_ infant _too_ , because he knows the only thing stopping him is Kev's unwatched mouth.

"Maybe she'd rather be eating something else." And Kevin thinks he's being smart, and Lip thinks it too, and so he starts laughing wide enough for Mickey to imagine someone (he's not naming names) shoving a rifle in there.

"Highly unlikely, don't know how much more her stomach could stretch. Besides," and he knows this is probably not a point he should bring up, but damn them all if he can't, because he's not going to start caring what people think now, "she's more than busy with the sad-eyed blonde she's got roleplaying a Midsummer Night's Dream with her on my fucking couch."

"I _can't_ imagine, fag-bashing Terry finding out what kind of Elton John and Katy Perry wet dream his house got snowed over in this winter. Course, now, it's summer, and the crops have never flourished in such an unimaginable beauty. Fucking weeds. Un- _fucking_ -believable. Make sure to mail me some tickets to the shoot-off." Kevin laughs, and begins rolling more joints once they've finally pulled into a vacant lawn space beside the park. "Or, _even better_ , _body parts_. Unless they're yours though, might be hard for you, you know, making it to the post office and all."

All Mickey can think to say to that, "Whatever." And then, "Don't know when marriage around here suddenly became a thing worth mentioning, especially coming from a fucking son-of-Frank's here."

"One of many," Lips counters, while he passes out a bottle of beer to an "of-age" sixteen-year-old (who Mickey is fairly certain still failed her sophomore year, causing concern for their line of work and aging methods) and pockets the change. "Seriously though, _Ian_? You're like his fucking _Prince Charming_ , man."

Kevin smirks before putting his thumbs up. Lips keeps talking unsurprisably. "Yeah, I'm fairly certain he's been having this fantasy since he was six. He's never gonna let you go now."

"Come on, Lip, why you gotta go freak him out like that?" That's the question on the tip of Kevin's tongue and slowly traveling when both his and Lip's thought progressions are cut off by Mickey's outburst. "The fuck should he?"

Lips is speechless—

"You seriously okay with that?"

Never mind.

And Mickey doesn't understand how, after all this time, people still mistake him for a dirtier version of the abominable snowman, like the kind that looks sketched out in chalk and is obviously only one of the many cartoon monsters used to advertise sugared cereals. Sure, he's paler than the abominable snowman, and he's got the word " _milk_ " spelt out in his last name, but he's _this close_ to changing it, and, yeah, after everything, he's pretty sure he's proven he's not a bad guy.

"Okay, okay. Let's make this fair, Lip." Kevin setlles down the wad of cash he's counting, and turns to Mickey. "You eat together, cook each other meals?"

Mickey looks down.

" _Pay_ for each other's meals? Without question?" Lip smirks at that. "More like Mick here pays for his."

"You do shit together? Help with bills? Random shit?" Kevin looks about ready to throw them a shower.

"I've seen him get Ian to swallow his pills the second he wakes up by witholding kisses." Lips slaps him on the shoulder, and Mickey is surprised his reflexes don't kick in to break the boy's hand.

He did that _once_.

"Hold on, how often do you see each other? Everyday? _Almost_ everyday?" Kevin's smile is growing, testing him.

"Well, they go to bed together, and wake up together, suspiciously closer than they originally were." Lip looks like he planned this. He makes a cuddling motion with his arms and Mickey makes an effort not to punch him. It works, and he's sad about it.

"Shit, you live together?"

Lips interjects— "Only, not always at the same place." And, upon hearing the words, Mickey knows that makes things a billion times worse. Shit.

"Ah, _yes._ Home is where the heart is," Kevin raises his voice.

"Not only that, but, when he crashed— Mickey's bed. Practically nursed him back to happiness by himself, wouldn't leave his side. We'd go in to check on him, and there'd be the other pillow pushed up impossibly close beside him." Lips smiled. "And— _and_ — something told me Mickey wasn't sleeping on the couch, because that spot had already been taken."

"Holy _shit_ , dude! Sounds like you're the one that proposed."

Mickey pockets three joints when the two turn around to laugh _not_ in his face. Assholes.

Then he remembers the squirrel fund and puts them back. Even bigger assholes.

~

Ian pours together apple-tinted drinks with fire-red wisps of hair bringing colour to the dark of the club and the neon lights that work hard to light up a loud room but only pale it into streaks of blackness.

Ian doesn't drink alcohol anymore.

He remembers Frank offering up details of a scam, one he almost felt lucky to be included in, because Frank wasn't his father, but, even when he was a bad one, he pretended to be it, and Ian knew that was at least one thing he wasn't responsible for. He doesn't tell his other siblings that.

Ian shakes his head, ' _no_ ', and when Frank hears that Ian has been up, and Ian has been down, he shows up later that week and on the same date to spend some fatherly time together with him. It includes money to be made on his part, and he tries to use beer to coax Ian into agreement the second time his head goes left before right.

"I can't drink alcohol, Frank. It fucks up my meds." Ian feels like he's soothing his toddler brother, with hints of resentment, like the kind Mickey seems to feel for his own kid, but with less reason to try.

"Can't drink alco— You're Irish! And God knows you're the only one who looks it."

Mickey walks into the kitchen and ruffles his hair at that, and it ends up in his eyes, but Ian doesn't immediately reach up to brush it out of his vision.

He's family.

"Fuck off, Frank." Mickey says.

"That," he raises an accusing finger at Ian, "is _not_ the Gallagher way."

"I'll be sure to remember that the next time I'm sleeping off my nearest hangover under a bridge in the dead of winter."

That accusing finger raises its neighbor up in a flippant gesture.

A guy asks for another glass, and Ian makes it a concoction, lifting his hand up high as though that would add to the flavours coming together in the pit below it.

He nods and takes it before walking away, and another he works with whose name he hates knowing he remembers, because he learned it at what felt to be a bad time, wipes his hand on a towel before turning to him. He wears a golden and sparkled tank that is not too tight, because it's not meant to be comfortable, along with equally distressing matching shorts. They all do.

"Brian wants to introduce you to someone."

"Oh, yeah? Who this time?" Ian remembers a lot of faces, and names that mean nothing to go with them.

"New guy. Musician. Got a record deal and everything, been playing at some clubs a while away from here. North Side." He wipes the outer shell of a glass with the same towel he just wiped droplets of green cider onto. Ian says nothing.

He continues working and just barely hearing the other man continue speaking his words because it's too loud for him to without paying him his full attention. He hears key words, and comes to know and believe based on the paraphrasing of Brian's that any in their circle stand a chance of making good with him because, while he doesn't give off any particularly gay vibe, "he's very alternative, which is, like, practically the same thing."

Ian says that he can't wait to meet him. He's not excited, but he's not lying either, because when Ian really can't wait to see him, it's mostly because he won't. He doesn't care enough to bother. If it happens, it happens.

It's later when Brian shows up and a guy that's the aforementioned follows him at his heel. Ian can see what's so alternative about him. Before he can introduce himself, or be introduced by the other man, "Let me guess. Guitar player?"

The guy nods, then smiles, but doesn't further comment on his skill in playing the instrument. "I sing lead." And it doesn't sound like a correction. It sounds like an addition.

Ian hears his name, forgets it by the end of the visit, when it's his time to clock out.

He thought they'd both left, in the company of the other men making their way to shake hands and catch up on lost information, but they're still there. Nearing the entrance, and staying put, not blocking the way of customers and club-goers, but instead entrancing them with tall words and frequent hand gestures.

"I thought you guys left." It's five now. It's an hour-long train ride soon. It's a face he wants to see not soon enough.

" _We_ ," Brian gestures to the guitar player, the _lead_ singer, the most-likely show-off, "are going to his hotel room in _ten_ minutes. Come with, it will only be a short while. Then, you can get home to that rugged boyfriend you keep talking about."

Does Ian talk about him? He can't remember. He thinks about him. Do his thoughts become audible words, and have they ever needed to?

Yeah, he guesses he talks about him.

"I have a gig I have to play later tonight. It's far. We're going to meet the other guys, load the truck, that sort of thing. You should come along."

"Then, break off whenever." Brian adds. Brian is like sugar, sweet and broken into small pieces that can only be reflected light into when they're separated.

"Yeah. Okay." Ian follows them out the door, and feels a nerve-wracking movement of more feet inching in from only close behind.

~

His hotel room _is_ nice. Ian expects it to be, and he isn't wrong. But he knows he'd change his mind on a whim, if it meant he there were someone in the room he wasn't having trouble reading.

The other guys are in a band too. The other guys are in a band with the other guy, and they have to be in the same place, and they're heading for it, grabbing equipment and instruments, and lining up down the hall in brisk movements to crowd themselves in an elevator incapable of giving Ian a heart attack when it drops too quickly, because it's silent and fluid, and not shaky like the ones in a hospital or the mall where he lives.

Somehow, the two finish loading empty guitar cases into the van and end up back in the hotel room together, and alone.

"So... Ian, right?"

"Right." He says, then doesn't try to further the conversation.

"Your friends tell me you're South Side." Then, he pulls out a cigarette and offers one to Ian, before he rejects it. "I know a couple guys."

"Yeah, there are a lot of guys, actually." He doesn't mention the fact that there are a lot of Gallaghers alone, and none of them ever really seem able to make it far enough in any other direction before things turn sour.

"You should come to one of my shows sometime. We could use the publicity, spread the word." Ian laughs at that.

"Heard that won't be necessary. Record deal, am I right?"

"Broker-than-usual agency." He stubs it out in a glass ash tray. "You could bring your boyfriend on a date, maybe some of your other friends."

Ian shrugs. "Don't think he'd be into that, but I'll be sure to ask." Ian knows that, if he doesn't hate this guy, he won't give Mickey any reason to pound his face in. Aside from the fact that no one's face should need to be that pretty, and this guy talks with a lot of conviction.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment, I could really use any advice.


End file.
